Looking Back From 2020

Here we are near the end of 2009, another year of great trading opportunities gone by – at least on the currencies that is!

If you met all your trading and financial goals in 2009, congratulations! Enjoy the end of the year, celebrate your fantastic results and reap the rewards of your efforts.

If however you are looking back on the year and wishing things had worked out differently, now is a great time to make some changes for your future. As the old saying goes, “if nothing changes, then nothing changes.”

One of WD Gann’s most famous books was called “Tunnel thru the Air, Or Looking Back from 1940”. While I’m not expecting readers to try and put together a market forecast for the next decade or so, it’s an interesting exercise to imagine yourself in the year 2020.

How is life for you in the year 2020? Where do you live? How much passive income are you earning? What kind of car do you drive?

Take some time to write down your goals, no matter how far away or how unlikely they appear. Be creative – this is your future, put everything into it you could possibly want.

Then, start working backwards to come up with a plan. Break it down into the smallest steps possible.

For example, imagine if I said to you “I want you to find a way to walk on the moon.” You would most likely laugh it off and dismiss it. However, what if you HAD to get to the moon, where would you make a start? You could begin to raise money, you would work out what you need to do to become an astronaut, you could seek out the appropriate people to learn from, perhaps someone who had been there before – you could start to break it down into small steps, one at a time.

The same goes with your financial goals. If I said to you “Go and make $10,000,000 by the end of the year 2020” you might initially shrug that off. The brain would say “that’s too big, it will never happen.” But think about it – break it down into smaller steps.

How does the $10,000,000 look? Will it be shares, property, cash or fixed interest accounts, or maybe businesses? Now break it down within those fields. For example, which shares would you want to be holding? Imagine if you had the money today, how would your portfolio look?

Now, work out how you are going to get started. Once you work out the first small step, whether it is acquiring capital or knowledge, you can start moving in the right direction. There is nothing like the magic of beginning a project to get some momentum going for you. As long as your financial projects remain unstarted, they can never gain momentum.

Imagine you begin your share portfolio – you have your first shares. Now, the financial process begins to speed up as you achieve capital gains and dividend income. Perhaps you could also sell some options against those shares, for further income. As your income increases, you move towards your final goal faster. If you reinvest a portion of your gains each year, your income can grow exponentially.

There’s no point looking backwards from today and wishing you had done things differently – you can’t change that. But you CAN change your next 10 years if you make some smart decisions now.

I’d like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I wish you all the best both personally and financially in 2010 and beyond.